UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. - The wait for the field hockey season is over. The Nittany Lions are ready to start doing what they love, which is competing. The Big Ten Conference announced the schedule Feb. 2 that included a 14-game schedule for Penn State. This announcement had ended a long period of anticipation and doubt, but also started a new exciting one.
Penn State will open the season by traveling to Virginia Beach to face a series of Big Ten opponents, beginning with Michigan at 10:30 a.m. on Fri., Feb. 26.
Although the season is starting in two weeks, the team and coaching staff have been preparing to compete for months and want to make this season a memorable one. Senior captains Madison Hutson, Abby Myers and Emma Spisak have been keeping the team motivated and in high spirts during these past unpredictable months.
"Us captains really emphasized that you're not always going to have a great day, even taking away field hockey. Being in school right now is really hard, social isolation and quarantine is really hard, especially for the freshmen and having them be able to come up to us and tell us how they are feeling really allowed a lot of growth and trust within our team," Myers said.
During the winter break, the team spent time away from each other, but to keep the sense of unity and motivation they broke into small accountably groups to check in on each other, but in a way where they weren't demanding anything but making sure they were okay.
"Giving people the opportunity to voice how they are feeling with a smaller group of people on the team has brought us closer and has been beneficial for all of us," Spisak said.
"As captains, we have been really good at communicating and being very open with our communication as far as what our expectations are and where we are trying to go. We are obviously trying to win a national championship at the end of the day, so whatever steps we need to take to get there has been a pretty open conversation and mind set for everyone on the team, especially for the captains," Hutson said.
In the fall, the Nittany Lions were keeping up on their skills by having inner-squad competitions with the mind set of eventually having a season even though they weren't sure. They wanted to keep the high energy in practices to be prepared for when they would be able to represent Penn State again.
"Although it was sometimes challenging to see the same people do the same things, it had allowed us to learn what each other's tendencies are and how we can put that into our game, which was ultimately bettering us. We had to learned how to best prepare ourselves to take over the spring," Hutson said.
"I think we have been intense since the fall until now because things are constantly changing. We never knew when our season was going be and its really exciting now, but as we approach closer to the start we will be getting into more technical stuff like corners. We will also be watching videos on the teams we are playing so we can adjust accordingly to them," Spisak said.
The Penn State coaching staff and team members couldn't be more excited to start their long-waited season and to compete on the Big Ten level again. They now want to showcase just how hard they have been working and training.
"I am most excited about just getting back on the field, being able to celebrate goals with the team, enjoying the pre-warm up celebration and the hype in the locker room. I get to just get out there one more time before it is all over for me as a senior," Myers said.
"I'm really looking forward to playing Iowa again because we did end our Big Ten Tournament last year with them," Spisak said.
Looking back on the 2019 season, Penn State didn't start out how they wanted but ended up getting as the runner-up in the Big Ten Tournament. The Nittany Lions are looking forward to the first game in two weeks to come out powerful and to set the tone for the season.
"We had a slow start in the 2019 season, so I think a lot of us are really determined to not do that because we don't just want to finish strong, we want to start and finish strong," Hutson said.
"This is really exciting, especially for the older girls. This is really going to be the last time we are going to be able to get out there and play. Hearing the news, it made it feel like it was all coming together," Myers said.